


Human Nature

by JoeMerl



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Death, Childhood Trauma, First Time Shifting, Foster Care, Full Moon, Full Shift Werewolves, Gen, Harm to Animals, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Julycanthropy, Julycanthropy 2020, Kidnapping, Loup-garou | Rougarou, No Smut, Non-Sexual, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Psychological Drama, Tags Are Hard, Werewolf Angst, Werewolf Children, Werewolf Culture, Werewolf Drama, Werewolf Fights, Werewolf Turning, Werewolf-related nudity, Werewolves, Whump, and the terrible implications thereof, non-sexual nudity, not abo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:49:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26870131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoeMerl/pseuds/JoeMerl
Summary: Reeling from his first traumatic night as a werewolf, fifteen-year-old Vinh struggles with whether or not to face the law or try and hide from what he is. Two older werewolves, each with their own dark pasts, try to help him figure things out.Originally posts on Tumblr for Julycanthropy 2020.
Relationships: Original Character & Original Character
Kudos: 3





	1. Vinh and Hector

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two werewolves fight, tentatively become friends, and then fight some more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm new to AO3, and this is the first story I'm posting here. Feel free to tell me if I'm making any obvious mistakes.
> 
> Anyway, this is a story that I wrote for for Julycanthropy 2020, posted in 31 prompt-based snippets over on my Tumblr account. (Which explains why there are so many scene breaks, incidentally.) This is parts 1-12; I'll try to have the rest up over the next few days. I hope that you enjoy!

To begin, nobody can deny that werewolves have it easier today than they did in the past.

For generations those afflicted with lycanthropy were either killed, imprisoned or chased away from the presence of other people; they were seen as evil or, more charitably, simply too dangerous to be left alone. These reactions, while perhaps understandable, only worsened the inherent struggles of a werewolf’s condition. Few gained more than the most rudimentary control over themselves in their wolfish form, and even fewer learned to repress their transformations so as to not undergo them every night. This only made them more dangerous and thus more likely to be shunned.

Things have improved greatly in the last century. Rehabilitation facilities now help new werewolves learn to manage their condition, teaching them greater control of both when they transform and how they behave afterwards. Those who graduate will still need to shift periodically, during which time they can be dangerous, but they can mitigate that by checking themselves into lycanthropic retreats, roaming acres of walled-off land where they cannot harm others. These measures, required by law, have both cut down on werewolf-related fatalities and in the process given werewolves a greater degree of social acceptance.

Of course, even under these circumstances, one cannot deny that a werewolf’s life is difficult. It is also true that no system is perfect. While the ideal is that every werewolf should transform under controlled circumstances, one need only watch the news to realize that this does not always happen. Some who develop lycanthropy either don’t notice or try to ignore the warning signs that come before their first change, while other werewolves refuse to follow the law when it comes to properly isolating themselves. In the most extreme cases you have “wild werewolves,” cultish groups which encourage followers to eschew “human” behavior in favor of antisocial and often violent activities.

It is due to such circumstances that two werewolves met one night, when both were running loose in a cold mountain forest.

* * *

There was another werewolf in the rougarou’s territory.

First he heard the howls, shrill and wild and unpracticed. He gave a longer, deeper call back, warning the enemy to find somewhere else to hunt. But the other werewolf wasn’t listening. Its bays kept getting closer and even more rabid.

It was coming to challenge him.

Obviously the rougarou wasn’t going to back down.

He was more than seven feet tall on his hind legs, with a body more human than other types of werewolf, but he could drop down on all fours and race through the trees with ease. His blood boiled as he rushed to meet his foe.

He roared, and suddenly the other werewolf emerged from the trees, snarling.

His opponent was a black garwalf—a small one, too, and skinny, though still more than six feet tall from head to tail. It stank of blood from rabbits and deer, its eyes glowing and its dirty fangs glistening in the moonlight. Its movements were erratic—it paced back and forth, hackles rising, then crouched down as if to leap, its ears twitching feverishly.

The rougarou was half a foot longer and far less scrawny. A normal werewolf would not have picked a fight like this, and if it had, it would have backed down when it saw such a larger adversary. Werewolves are wild, but not stupid. A human might have realized that this newcomer was a very young werewolf, likely undergoing its first transformation, which meant that it was all feral rage without any experience to rein in its instincts.

The rougarou, of course, was not so clear-headed. At the moment he was also consumed with fury, though also smart enough to know that he had the upper hand.

The garwalf leapt!

In an instant the rougarou was on his hind legs. With clawed hands he snatched his enemy out of the air, taking advantage of an ability that the garwalf lacked. He reared back his head and gave a vicious bite to his enemy’s side. The garwalf shrieked in pain and anger, throwing back its head, but before it could thrash free the rougarou simply threw it against the nearest tree. It crashed into the trunk and crumpled to the ground.

The rougarou bellowed as the garwalf struggled to its four feet, its own blood now drenching its side. It snarled again and then took off into the trees.

* * *

The battle happened close to dawn, so the rougarou was still guarding his border when the morning arrived. He hissed, holding one hand up against the gray light, then roared in pain as his body reshaped itself. The fur melted away, his bones shifted and shrank, and after a moment the monster was replaced by a man named Hector, who breathed deeply as he braced himself against a tree.

He took a moment to collect himself, rubbing his eyes and remembering the events of the previous night.

“Aw, hell,” he said. All he wanted to do was go back to his cabin and sleep.

Instead he sighed, pushed himself upright and stalked off in the direction that the garwalf had gone.

* * *

The garwalf was hiding in a thicket, nursing his wounds. But when the sunlight crept into the shadows he, too, began to transform. Hackles raised even as they disappeared, a howl became a pained scream, and soon the creature was a boy named Vinh, gasping and moaning as he crouched on all fours in the bushes.

Vinh was fifteen years old. He wasn’t short, but he was skinny and somehow seemed much smaller than he really was—he always had his head down, cringing away from the people around him. He had never had many friends; when kids at school talked to him he became a stuttering mess, and afterwards his embarrassment would make him surly and unpleasant.

His social worker would have told you that he was timid due to a difficult family history. Vinh himself would just say that he was a crybaby and a coward.

Either way, it is not surprising that he reacted badly when his mind refocused and he found himself in a dimly-lit forest, naked and aching and with half-dried animal blood from his face down to his stomach.

“ _Agh!_ Where am I?! How the hell did I _aaaggghhh?!_ ”

He had tried to stand, grabbing a tree for support, but he was wracked with pain—he collapsed to the ground, feeling sticks and rocks digging into his injured back, and found even more blood when he touched his stinging side. He lay there for a moment, panting and shivering, each breath coming out in a cloud of mist.

He kept crying and whimpering, but less coherently, as memories of the previous night began to surface in his mind.

He heard the sound of crackling leaves and rustling boughs as someone approached.

Vinh yelped and tried to cover himself, but let out another horrified shout when he realized that his hands were caked in blood up to the wrists. He held them out as if infected, then curled up on his side, pulling his knees up to his chest and moaning with fear and confusion.

A man stepped out from the trees. He was at least six feet tall and barrel-chested, with broad shoulders and muscular arms. He was also naked, but unlike Vinh this didn’t seem to bother him. He had tanned skin and dark brown hair and stared down at Vinh with dark, unreadable eyes.

“Not making yourself hard to find, yelling like that. I think you were making less noise last night.”

“W-what?” was all that Vinh could manage in response.

“Don’t you remember? You were howling like crazy. Itching for a fight, I guess.”

Vinh’s eyes widened. Among his jumbled memories he suddenly recalled crouching to the ground, desperate to rip apart a huge figure that loomed over him the way that this man was looming over him now.

“Please, s-sir—I-I’m s-s-sorry, I didn’t m-mean—I didn’t—I-I don’t know what—”

“Calm down. How badly did I rough you up?”

“—w-what came over me, I just—I-I d-don’t even—”

The man suddenly grabbed Vinh’s arm and yanked him to his feet, then grabbed his other shoulder and forced him to turn around. Vinh yelped again, several horrifying scenarios flashing through his mind, but the man merely tutted to himself as he examined the boy’s injuries.

“Bite’s already scabbed over. Nasty bruise on your back, must hurt like hell. Too bad we didn’t run into each other earlier—you’d heal better as a wolf. Save the rest for tonight, I guess.”

Vinh only trembled in response. He looked down at his bare feet, bloody hands still held out from his body.

The man sighed.

“I’m Hector. What’s your name?”

“V-Vinh. Sir.”

“Last night was a full moon. Probably your first change, right?”

“A full...moon…”

Vinh shivered, and not only from the cold, as he recalled what had happened the previous night.

* * *

_Some types of lycanthropy have a clear cause—you become a rougarou if you look into one’s eyes, for example, or a lobison based on the circumstances of your birth. But some people just seem to become werewolves, typically at adolescence. As with most things about lycanthropy, scientists are unsure of the cause—some teenagers simply find themselves transforming one night, almost always corresponding to a full moon. **  
**_

_This night Vinh lay in bed, unable to sleep. The curtains were drawn, but some silver light could be seen through the thin fabric. Vinh couldn’t stop staring at it. Even when he closed his eyes it felt like it was pulling at him, calling to him, forcing him to look no matter how much he tried to stop._

_He sat up. Breathed deeply._

_He had often noticed when it was a full moon—because he was observant, he told himself, not because of...anything else. But he had never felt like this before. He trembled, staring at the pool of silver light that fell on the carpet of his bedroom._

_He was scared of it._

_Scared of how much he was_ excited _by it. Scared of what that might mean._

_He got up, glanced to make sure that his foster brother didn’t stir in the next bed, then hesitated for another second. Slowly he eased his foot into the pool of light. It seemed to tingle where it touched his skin, and before he knew it he was standing, feeling the same goosebumps on his face and arms._

_His mind was playing tricks on him. He would glance out the window and nothing would happen. He’d feel nothing, or maybe he’d feel_ something _but nothing would happen, he wasn’t going to sleep until he looked but when he did everything would fine and he could finally stop thinking about it._

_He pulled open the curtains. Gasped as more light flooded into the room._

_The moonlight seemed to crackle on his skin. It burrowed into his brain, making his mind race and spin. He wanted to close the curtains again, but the raging screams inside of him made it hard for that thought to be heard._

_He couldn’t see the moon from his window. He had to go outside._

_He had to run in the moonlight. Hunt in it. Kill._

No, _a small part of him whispered._

_But his body was already staggering toward the door._

* * *

_There had always been something hidden inside of Vinh._

_Sometimes it came out suddenly—like in sixth grade, when he had attacked Johnny Franklin in a fury of screams and scratches and bites. He couldn’t even remember what Johnny had said to set him off, but it took two teachers to pull him off and another thirty seconds before he had actually calmed down, looking just as surprised and frightened as any of the onlookers._

_Usually it was more subtle, like when he woke up from some dream that he couldn’t quite remember, but was sure had involved running and leaping and bloodshed. Or in Biology class a few weeks ago, they had been watching a nature documentary where five lions took down a giraffe. Vinh had felt an uncontrollable grin cross his face, his heart hammering and his fingers clenching tightly in anticipation. When he snapped out of it he’d felt drool on his lower jaw._

_Even when he was..._ normal, _sometimes Vinh could feel some strange presence lurking in the back of his mind. He tried to tell himself that he was imagining it, that it was another stupid fear that he was inventing. He never talked to anyone about it, not even his social worker or counselors, because why should he? It was laughable, the idea that someone as wimpy as him could possibly be a _—_ _

_He kept telling himself that, but he believed it less and less as time went on. Sometimes he even wondered if other people knew it too. Maybe that was why his dad had left and his mom had hit him. Maybe that’s why he didn’t have any friends._

_He had tried to suppress those thought, hoping that this other side of him, if it_ was _real, would at least be content to stay hidden._

_But now, as he stumbled past his foster parents’ bedroom and down the stairs, he knew that it was finally ready to come out._

* * *

_Vinh stood on the front lawn, staring up at the full moon. There were no clouds blocking it from sight; the whole neighborhood was bathed in its brilliance._

_It was close to midnight. The air was cool, and he felt very alone._

Go back inside, _some tiny part of him pleaded. It was fighting with all its strength, but Vinh could feel it fading. He put his head in his hands, pulling at his hair, but even as he did he craned his face back up to drink the moonlight with his eyes._

_His muscles began to ache. He knew that the moon was causing it, but he couldn’t work up the will to try and escape it._

_The feral presence in his mind was getting sharper and stronger as it spread throughout his body. He struggled to breathe, struggled to think, but he didn’t want to think, he wanted to just give in and let the beast take over. He was in a trance, but not a peaceful one—every second he felt less like Vinh and more like a wild animal._

_He bent over, gasping for air—he was hot, suffocated, his body no longer fit what he was quickly becoming. He fanned his shirt against himself, then wrestled it off, so frenzied that he could barely remember how—the fabric ripped in his hands with surprising ease, leaving it tattered by the time that he got it over his head. He seethed as he stripped off the rest of his clothes, then fell onto his hands and knees, his fingers curling into soil of the well-manicured lawn._

_The cold air stung pleasantly on his sweaty skin. The moonlight felt like it was tearing him open at the same time that it filled him with a strange and dizzying strength. His nakedness wasn’t just physical—Vinh could feel his mind divesting itself of all shame and civilization, feel his human fears fall away to expose the monster waiting eagerly in his soul._

_The agony kept building—he grit his teeth, body straining—_

_And then the dam broke. His bones shifted and his muscles tore, and he screamed with pain and rage and relief and joy._

_He screamed again as black hair sprouting from his face, his chest, his back, his limbs. He was swelling and reshaping into something that no longer looked human.  
He screamed a third time, throwing back his head as new teeth burst from his gums and claws emerged from fingers and toes that were now massive paws. The scream itself transformed into an animal yowl._

_Then the door to the house opened behind him._

* * *

Vinh shuddered. His face screwed up and he began to cry.

Hector sighed, shaking his head. He stared at Vinh for a moment, then waved his hand.

“Come on. I’ll see what I can do about getting you cleaned up and on home.”

Then he walked off. Vinh wiped his eyes with his arm, careful to avoid all the blood on his hands. Hector glanced back after a few steps but didn’t stop walking.

It would be a lie to say that Vinh wasn’t scared of him—as a rule he was scared of everyone, and at the moment he was drowning in so much fear and shame and anxiety that he wanted to curl up and hide in the bushes again. Not to mention that Hector had nearly bitten him in half the night before.

Nevertheless, Vinh followed. What else was he going to do?

* * *

They were walking on an incline, and slowly Vinh realized that they must be on the mountain outside of town. It was still dark when they set off; gray light spread over the landscape, but it only made everything look more shadowy and unsettling.

Vinh had never felt so cold. At first he walked with his arms out in front of him, but eventually he crossed them over his chest—it was just as bloody as his hands, after all. His feet were numb, stumbling over the tree roots and rocks every few steps. He felt disgusting, dirty and tired and—well, _bloated._ His stomach twisted as he considered why.

Meanwhile Hector walked ahead of him with long, purposeful strides, occasionally murmuring to himself under his breath.

The long walk gave Vinh time to think, but he tried very hard not too. The whole forest seemed familiar. Nothing specific, but he could remember running through these trees on all fours, desperate to kill something—he remembered seeing a deer, giving chase and leaping at it and—

He shut his eyes tightly.

He focused on the cold. The way that it exacerbated the pain in his back and side. The hard dirt beneath him, his body’s own trembling.

It was something one of his therapists had taught him. “Be in the present, Vinh.” Or as he put it, focus on the horrible now and not the horrible past that got you here.

After a while he noticed that they were following a vague path, with fewer leaves and less grass on the ground. “Where are w-we g-g-going?” he asked, teeth chattering. “D-Do you—h-have a c-c-car parked ar-round here?”

Hector scoffed. “ _No._ I have a cabin.”

“You l-l-live here? In the w-woods?”

“Sure. Makes changing easier.”

Vinh stared. It took Hector a moment to look back, at which point Vinh immediately winced and looked away.

“Look, I’ve tried the retreats. Don’t like ‘em, don’t like the people who go to them. No one’s allowed to camp around here, so it’s a good place to transform. Keeps everyone safe and happy.”

“I d-didn’t think that was l-legal.”

“It ain’t. Anyway, here we are.”

He looked up, expecting to see a cabin, but instead they had come to a creek. It was about ten feet wide and very clear.

“You can wash off here. When you’re done, my place is about a quarter of a mile that way, right next to the water.” Hector pointed upstream. “I’ll see what I can do about finding you some clothes.”

“Th-Thank you.”

Hector went off without a reply. Vinh waited for him to be gone, then crouched on the bank to wash his hands in the freezing water. He intended to ease himself in slowly, or maybe just splash some water on his face and torso, but then his knees slipped in the mud and he fell in with a cry and a splash. He emerged a second later, dripping and shuddering and hugging himself tightly. The gelid water went up to his chest, and he took several deep breaths as he adjusted to the cold. The sudden change in temperature only made his stomach churn more.

The animal blood began to melt and dribble down his skin, which meant that some from his face found its way into his mouth. Immediately he spat it out, retching at the horrible taste, which was salty and metallic.

And yet he suddenly remembered loving it last night. The feel of it rushing into his mouth as he clamped down that deer’s throat and crushed it to death with his teeth. Ripped into its skin, tearing out great chunks, not even chewing, just ripping and swallowing and crawling into its stomach to tear out its intestines and lap up the blood, licking it up from the animal’s corpse and the ground and his own fur—

Vinh slipped and fell again, swallowing a great mouthful of water. It was so cold that it burned its throat, and also pink with the evidence of what he had done.

He couldn’t even surface again before he threw up, choking as he flailed to reach the clean air.

Finally he managed to stand, soaking wet and now covered with his own sick. He trembled, chilled to his core and cringing with revulsion.

* * *

When Vinh was finally clean he stumbled along the riverbed, dripping wet and colder than ever. He started to wonder if you could get frostbite without snow. He would have cut off his frozen toes for a pair of pants.

Finally he spotted Hector’s cabin—though “shack” may have been a better description; the building was slighter larger than his foster family’s living room. It looked sturdy at least. The clearing around it was filled with haphazard piles of junk, but also a lot of wooden statues and carvings, most of which looked like animals. Hector sat by a fire, now clean and dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.

“Ah, finally,” he said as Vinh stumbled forward, shivering and looking awkward. The boy barely caught a bundle of clothes that he threw. “None of that’s gonna fit, mind you.”

“Thank you. Thanks,” Vinh stammered. He drew closer to the fire and dressed as quickly as he could. The white shirt was dirty and fit him like a tent, while the jeans were ripped and so baggy that he had to hold them up. Still, he was a bit warmer and no longer naked. That was something.

“I only have the one pair of boots,” Hector added, lifting one foot. “You’d just be tripping over yourself in ‘em. Sit down.”

Hector motioned to the statue across from him, a stag large enough to use as a chair. “Did you make these?” Vinh asked, gingerly sitting on its back. “They’re really good.”

“Eh, I’m sure you could find better. Something to do, though. What’d you eat last night?”

Vinh went stiff, shoulders rising up towards his ears.

“W-Why?” he asked, sounding both scared and defensive.

Hector scoffed, rolling his eyes at the treetops. “Calm down, Vinny, I’m just making conversation. Thought I’d offer breakfast. I have a rabbit hanging inside that I could cook.”

Vinh looked into the fire, feeling his face burn. “I’m not hungry. And my name’s not Vinny,” he added, so quietly that Hector might not have heard it.

“Fine. Now, then, we gotta get you home. You from Adamsville?”

“Yeah.” He was rubbing his bare feet in a vain attempt to warm them, which gave him a good excuse not to look Hector in the eye.

“And you ran all the way up the mountain last night?”

He shrugged. “I was pretty close to the edge of town,” he mumbled.

Hector nodded, throwing a wood chip into the fire. “Well, it’s a long walk back on only two legs. However things played out for you, by now your parents are probably—”

“I don’t have parents,” Vinh interrupted.

Hector paused.

“Where do you live, then?”

“I’m in foster care.”

“Funny coincidence. I was, too.” Vinh looked up, but Hector’s attention back on the fire as he warmed his hands. “What about your foster parents? Do you think _they_ might be looking for you?”

Vinh suddenly found it hard to breathe.

“I…I don’t know. I mean—”

Vinh blinked several times. His face screwed up, and it was very clear that he was fighting not to cry. He put one hand over his eyes.

Hector had little patience for all this emoting. He snapped his fingers to get the boy’s attention.

“Never mind. Go inside and lay down for a while.”

“Huh? I—”

“Don’t argue, kid. You’re a mess. Pull yourself together while I figure things out.”

Vinh winced. Part of him was angry at being dismissed like a child at naptime. But he was more tired than he’d ever been in his life, his head was throbbing and any excuse to get out of this conversation felt like a godsend.

“Alright. Thanks.”

He stood, but hesitated. Took a deep breath. Wondered if his foster parents really were looking for him, and what would happen when they found him.

And then, out of nowhere, he spun around and stomped his foot into the fire. It had died down a bit by then, but he still hissed in pain as his bare skin sent the embers flying. He pulled it out quickly, waving his foot to put out the cuff of his pants leg.

Hector jumped. Vinh took another deep breath before gingerly putting his burnt foot back on the ground. His miserable expression was now sullen.

“What the hell was that about?”

Vinh stared. _I don’t know,_ he almost said.

“My foot was cold.”

And with that he turned and stomped into the shack, wincing with every step.

* * *

The inside of Hector’s home was sparse—a few more of his carvings, some more junk, and a mattress covered by some blankets. The kid was lying there with his back to the window. He wasn’t moving, so Hector decided that he was probably asleep.

Good. Maybe some rest would make him less whiny.

Hector felt a twinge of guilt at that thought, but the kid’s constant cringing and crying was really starting to annoy him. How old was he, anyway? Hector would have guessed anywhere between thirteen and sixteen. Hector had been eleven the first time he’d changed, and he hadn’t—

He shook his head. That was _not_ the right way to think about this.

Hector shifted on his feet, watching as the boy fidgeted. The kid had been dragged into a life that he didn’t want. Hector had been through that at his age. He’d even _done_ that to somebody else.

He had a child in need of help. Luckily he knew someone who could actually help him.

He gave the kid one last look and then headed off into the forest.

There was a dirt road about a mile from Hector’s cabin. He didn’t need to make the full trip; he met the forest ranger about halfway there.

“Carol,” he said, nodding.

“Hector.” She was a short woman, curly hair mostly gray under her hat. She looked grumpy, her arms crossed over her chest. “I assume you know why I’m here?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

She gave him a look like she couldn’t decide if he was specifically trying to be annoying.

“We had a werewolf in town,” she said, taking her cell phone out of her pocket. “A fifteen-year-old boy changed unexpectedly. You seen him, or did you just decide to go for an early morning stroll right when I happened to be comin’ to see ya?”

Hector gave a small scoff, regarding the park ranger carefully. Honestly, his first instinct was to lie, even though he had no good reason to—he needed her help, and there would be nothing but trouble if he tried to hide the kid. A few years ago someone got lost on the mountain and there was a _search party._ Ruined his peace and quiet and almost ended with him eating someone.

He liked Carol, but he hated authority figures, and she was, for all intents and purposes, his parole officer and landlady. It made for a complicated relationship.

“Yeah. The genius challenged me to a fight last night. He’s sleeping things off in my cabin.”

“What kind of fight?”

“He came looking for trouble and I roughed him up 'til he ran off. He’s fine!” he added as Carol threw up her hands. “He attacked me, what do you expect me to do?”

“You know if he’s hurt the sheriff wouldn’t be able to overlook it. You squatting up here is contingent on you never hurting anybody.”

Hector growled. The fact was, transforming in random forests was very illegal. Then again, camping in this forest wasn’t allowed easier, and eventually Carol and the sheriff had both decided that it was easier to keep other trespassers away than to drag Hector to the police station on a regular basis. He rarely left the western half of the mountain, which his wolf instincts had designated as his “territory,” so this had proved fairly workable for the last few years.

Minus that time he almost ate a guy. And now, apparently.

“The kid’s got a bruise and a scab, alright? Now let’s talk about someone taking him off my hands.”

“No problem. Lead the way.”

“I have another idea. You know my friend, Dr. Brady?”

“Yeah. What’s he got to do with anything?”

“Well, you have to send the kid to the werewolf rehab anyway, right? He works there. Let him come and pick him up.”

"He’s an hour’s drive away. Why the hell should I call him instead of just taking the boy back to town myself? We got the sheriff looking for him, Hector. I ain’t got time to play games.”

She started to step past him, but Hector moved to block her, eyes hard and lip curled. She blinked, but then her own gaze met his, calmer but just as steely.

Hector sighed.

“Look, the kid’s a wreck right now. He can barely open his mouth without crying,” he added, as Carol began to speak. “The last thing he needs right now is you dragging him back to town and throwing him in jail.”

“You know he ain’t be arrested, but he’s still gotta be processed. That’s the law.”

“Then at least let Dr. Brady take him.” Hector rarely referred to his friend that way, save to poke fun at him, but he figured a fancy title would help sell the idea. “Dealing with werewolf kids is his specialty."

“Well, he’s an hour, two-hour drive away! I’m a five minute walk away!”

“Yeah, but you don’t know what it’s like, having humans—throw you in the back of a police car just because you’re a—“

“Oh, don’t give me _that!_ ” Carol sneered, and the look she gave him was close to disgust. “Playing the victim—what do you think _Dr. Brady_ would say about that?”

Hector’s hard expression faltered for half a second.

After a moment Carol sighed and threw up her hands again. “Fine. I’ll call it in to the sheriff and let him decide. You’ll get Dr. Brady in a few hours or a police warrant in half that time."

“Hmph."

She started to walk away, then stopped and looked back at him.

“Y’all can remember things pretty well, right? What you do when you’re wolves, I mean.”

“Pretty well, yeah.”

“Then I’m not surprised the kid’s a mess. He tell you what he did before he left town?”

Hector hesitated. “No.”

“Attacked his mom. Or foster mom, I think. She’s in the hospital, from what I’ve heard.” She shook her head as she walked off. “Brady’s got his work cut out for him, that’s for sure.”

* * *

Vinh laid on Hector’s mattress, staring at the wall. He hovered at the edge of sleep, so tired yet panicked that he couldn’t quite tell if he was dreaming or daydreaming. Either way, his thoughts kept traveling back to the same place.

He had attacked Mrs. Robinson.

The Robinsons were one of those couples who took in a lot of foster children—Vinh was the 58th, apparently. They had adopted three of them, kept some for years, but most kids only stayed with them for a little while. Vinh was one of the latter; he was only scheduled to live there for a few weeks while his social worker finished arrangements with a different family.

It wasn’t like he was super attached to anyone there. But they had all been really nice to him.

He curled tighter on the mattress, closing his eyes and trying to block out the memory.

The front door had opened, and she had said—something; Vinh’s mind hadn’t been in a state that could comprehend words. But there had been one last shred of humanity, one brief moment of panic when he saw her and realized that she saw him and could feel the overwhelming desire to rip her limb from limb.

He had tried to scream a warning.

But then he had slipped over the edge. When he had opened his mouth, all that came out was a snarl.

He had jumped at her. She had screamed. And then he’d—

He’d bitten her. He remembered throwing his head back, trying to rip a piece out of her flesh.

Where had he bitten her? Was she alright?

He didn’t know. All he remembered was that then Mr. Robinson had shown up. He had screamed, and—hit Vinh with something? He remembered pain—and then Vinh had run off into the night.

And there was blood. Yeah, he definitely remembered Mrs. Robinson’s blood. Not a lot, but—maybe enough, enough that she might be—

Vinh shook with the effort to keep from crying.

He was going to change again tonight. That was how it worked, right? Werewolves changed every night, until they went to a rehab center and learned how to control their lycanthropy. That could take _years,_ and he would never get rid of it completely. He could—feel it now, lurking inside of him. It was jumpy and seething, radiating anger and desperate to break free.

He was a monster.

He had attacked a nice, middle-aged lady who had taken him in and fed him for the last two weeks. And now they’d have to take him away, put him in some special prison for kids like him, just to make sure that he didn’t do it again. He couldn’t even blame them, but the thought was horrifying. Five years of on-and-off counseling hadn’t made any progress on his various issues. And now he had to learn to control _this?_ While locked up with a bunch of guys who were just as unstable?

No wonder Hector lived out here. Vinh suddenly thought that running away and isolating himself from the world sounded like a great idea.

It was an idle thought at first, but the more he pondered it the more it solidified in his mind.

The door to the shack banged open. Instantly Vinh gasped and sat up.

He half-expected Mrs. Robinson. She’d be standing in the doorway, and then he’d lose control and attack her again.

It was Hector. He blinked.

“Well. You’re on edge, aren’t you? Thought you were asleep.”

“Nope,” Vinh said, his voice hoarse. He began to climb off the mattress.

“You can stay and sleep if you want.”

He swayed on his feet, but shook his head. “I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

“Hmm. Alright, then. Come on out and I’ll tell you how things are gonna go down.”

* * *

Hector threw some more wood onto the fire as Vinh walked over with shaky steps. The pair took their seats from earlier. There was a pause before Hector spoke.

“You do realize that they’re looking for you, right?”

Vinh looked up, the color draining from his face.

“Who?”

“Well, the person I talked to was the forest ranger.” He spoke in a slow way that was probably meant to be calming. “She’s calling a friend of mine. He works at the state facility for kids your age. He’ll take you back to town, help smooth things over and get you ready—”

“I can’t go back to town.”

Hector paused, then shifted in his seat.

“Look...Carol, the forest ranger...she told me how you hurt your mom.”

“Foster mom.” That seemed important, somehow. He shook his head. “W-What did she say? How is she?”

“All I know is that she’s in the hospital.”

“In the hospital _how?_ ” Vinh's could feel the angry presence inside of him rising up with his voice. “With a broken arm? In the emergency room? In the _morgue?!_ ”

“You tell me. I don’t know how bad you hurt her.”

“ _I COULDN’T HELP IT!_ ” Vinh was suddenly on his feet. “ _I couldn’t stop myself from doing it!_ ”

“Did I say you could?” Hector said, and now his voice was getting less calm. “It was an accident. These things happen to people like us.”

“ _People like us?! PEOPLE?!_ ” Hector got to his feet, but Vinh continued to glare up at him, his expression fierce. “I wasn’t a _person_ when I did that! I don’t think I’m even a _person_ now!”

“Calm down, kid.”

“What am I supposed to do, huh?! Just go to the hospital and say ‘sorry Mrs. Robinson, but _THESE THINGS HAPPEN_ to _MONSTERS_ like me?!’”

He was breathing very hard. Hector grimaced, but remained silent.

"I’m not going back.”

“Then what do you plan to do, huh?”

"I don’t know! I’ll—live out here!” Even as he said it he knew that it was ridiculous. He’d never even been camping before.

“Well, you better get to work building yourself a cabin, because I’m not looking for a roommate. And I suggest you try the other side of the mountain, unless you want me kicking your ass every night from now on.”

“Then I’ll find another forest!” Vinh said wildly. “I’ll find some pack of wild werewolves to help me! But I’m not—“

Hector struck Vinh on the face so hard that he fell to the ground.


	2. Hector and Geoffrey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As they wait for Dr. Brady, Hector tells Vinh about his time living in a werewolf cult.

Silence reigned for about five seconds. Vinh got up on his elbow and touched his cheek. He seemed confused about why he was suddenly on the ground with his face stinging. 

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Hector growled. “And quit crying!” he added, as Vinh let out a small sob of pain. “It seems like you’ve been doing that since I found you. You want to be a wild werewolf? The way you carry on they’d beat you to death in five minutes.”

Vinh instantly felt his anger harden again. He gave one sniff and then wiped his eyes, smearing dirt on his face. He made no effort to stand up.

“I can still feel it inside of me,” he croaked. “The werewolf. I feel like it’s still controlling me.”

Hector scoffed. He was digging through one of the many woodpiles, not even looking at Vinh anymore. He extracted a round, flat piece; it looked as if someone had sawed the top few inches from a tree stump and then sanded it down. He sat back in his chair, took a pencil out of his pocket and began to draw.

“If that were true you’d be hunting rabbits, not sitting around and moping.”

A muscle clenched in Vinh’s jaw.

“Why shouldn’t I run off and become a wild werewolf?” He knew that he was just being petulant, but he didn’t care—he wanted to piss Hector off, maybe even get him to hit him again. “Isn’t that what they say? That when you become a werewolf it takes you over, even in human form? Maybe that’s what’s happening to me.”

“No, they say that you should _let it_ take you over. Do you have any idea what wild werewolves are like, kid?”

“Well, I know they live in the woods, change where they can attack people...oh, and you just said that they beat up people smaller and weaker than them. Gee, you’re right, I’d really _hate_ to run into any assholes like that.” 

Hector looked up in time to see Vinh pointedly rubbing his cheek, which was already developing an ugly black bruise.

“I think I liked you better when you were crying. Well, let me tell you something, Vinny—I _was_ a wild werewolf. Joined up with ‘em when I was eleven, stayed ‘til I was about your age. And if you’re _so_ indignant about one little smack in the face then trust me, some cushy therapy sessions at the werewolf center are more up your alley.”

A long silence followed.

“Why? I mean—why'd you join them?”

Hector shrugged. There suddenly seemed to be the slightest stiffness or unease in his movements and tone.

“Stumbled across one of the websites they use to recruit people. Talked about how stifling humanity was, living your true nature, finding true family in the pack...all that bullcrap. Mighty tempting for a kid bouncing from one foster home to another.”

Vinh couldn’t agree, but he didn’t argue the point. Hector went on.

"I already had a record. Got in fights all the time. I was a real beast,” he said with a wry smile. “But that’s what they were looking for—kids who wanted to be monsters. I wasn’t a werewolf yet—they gave it to me when I joined. Those websites made it sound so exciting. I knew what it was like, having pent-up anger always wanting to get out. The thought of letting it _really_ take over, change my whole body, make me stronger and faster and _better_ than everyone around me...well, it was that or keep getting lectured by a new fake family every couple of months. So I ran away. Met with the guy who ran the website. He took me into the woods and made himself a few hundred bucks by turning me over to a pack.”

He paused. Vinh thought that was the end of the story. But then Hector’s eyes glanced up, giving Vinh a thoughtful look. He took out a knife and began carving something into his wooden plaque. 

“They were led by a guy who called himself Alpha…”

* * *

_Alpha greeted Hector when he arrived, then woke up the rest of the pack, who had been sleeping off their hunt from the previous night. Soon they gathered around the young boy in a circle, wearing various bleary expressions of interest or skepticism._

_The pack had ten people in total. They were led by Alpha and two other men named Beta and Klaw, all of whom looked like they were in their mid-twenties. Alpha and Beta both had adult girlfriends (which werewolves called “mates”); the other five were teenagers of various ages, four boys and one girl. The youngest was a thirteen-year-old boy called Cub. That name always belonged to the youngest packmate, so he was particularly excited for Hector to relieve him of that title._

_“Then I’ll change my name to ‘Quckbite,’” he bragged, drawing himself up proudly. “And if anyone calls me ‘Cub’ again I’ll rip their fucking throats out.”_

_Alpha stood with Hector inside the circle. He was a tall man, lean but muscular, with long, wild hair and a friendly sneer on his face. He wore a wolf’s skin as a cape, but nothing else—wild werewolves considered clothing to be optional at best. Hector was slightly in awe of him; he was charming with an undercurrent of fierceness._

_He asked Hector why he wanted to join their pack, and he answered with complaints about his normal life and answers gleaned from the recruitment site. One older boy called Hector a “scrawny runt,” and Hector spun around and said threatened to fight him right there. The werewolf was twice Hector’s size, so Alpha seemed amused by the whole exchange._

_“You’re sure you want to join us?” he kept asking, or “You’re willing to cast off your humanity? Once you do, there’s no turning back.”_

_Yes, yes, yes, Hector kept insisting. “I want to be a werewolf. When can you bestow the gift?”_

* * *

“Yeah, ‘bestow the gift.’ That’s how the website always described it,” Hector said, shaking his head as he looked back at his carving. “Man, I was a stupid kid.”

“They sound like some sort of cult,” Vinh murmured. Then, “What would they have done if you said no?”

“Oh, I’m sure they would have killed me. Didn’t realize that at the time, though. Or maybe I did, deep down. This pack didn’t seek out humans to kill, but part of the whole philosophy is that it doesn’t matter if you do—after all, we’re hunters, humans are just meat, they’re barely alive anyway, yadda yadda yadda.”

He blew some wood shavings from his work. “Which brings us to the cage.”

* * *

_“A cage?!” Hector said, his voice cracking. “Why do I have to go in a cage?!”_

_Cub hit him on the arm. “So that we don’t rip you apart when we change, stupid!”_

_“Besides, you’re already locked in a cage, aren’t you?” Alpha purred. “_ Human _life is the cage._ This _is the passage to real freedom.”_

_Hector shifted nervously. The cage looked like it was made for a large dog; he could fit in there, but it wouldn’t be comfortable._

_The older werewolf called him a chicken. Hector turned around and snarled at him, the way he thought a wolf would, then got on his hands and knees and crawled inside._

_“Good choice, little man. Now just keep your hands and feet inside so that nobody can hurt you. And when I come to bestow the gift...be brave. Don’t miss your chance.”_

_Hector nodded, heart hammering in his chest._

_The sky was dark and the moon was bright. Gazing out from between the bars, Hector watched as one by one the members of the pack transformed._

_He had seen werewolves change in videos before, but he was utterly transfixed to see it in person. Cub was standing closest to the cage, and Hector gasped as he threw back his head, crying out, growing taller—muscles bulged on his arms and chest, sandy hair and wicked claws erupted from his skin—he roared at the sky, and all around him the same thing was happening to everyone else, weak human forms giving way to beautiful and powerful beasts._

_Hector wanted that. His soul ached with jealousy._

_But suddenly Cub was on all fours, whipping around and snarling right at Hector’s cage. The boy let out a cry and backed up—soon there were more werewolves, three and then five, crowding around and slamming into it and trying to reach him through the bars. Hector felt a rising panic—he wondered if his protection would really hold, scooting toward the middle where none of their claws could get him—_

_There was a sharp howl and the wolves all scattered. Some ran off into the woods; some fell back, watching as the largest wolf of all sauntered forward._

_It was Alpha. He was a rougarou, down on all fours, eyes glowing bright and red in the darkness. He came right up to Hector’s cage, calm and controlled, waiting._

_Hector knew what to do. Look at a rougarou and you become one. He just had to make eye contact._

_Hector approached the front of his cage. Some deep-seated, stupid human instinct kept his gaze down, but he forced his eyes up and met Alpha’s stare. The red light burned so brightly. Hector flinched, kept looking—his body trembled, he kept looking—then he began to convulse, he couldn’t breathe, but he kept looking until he fell onto his back, his muscles seizing and shaking, red still coloring his vision even as he gazed at the treetops through the bars—_

_He lay still, panting. Alpha let out a quiet, satisfied growl before running off into the trees._

_He’d done it. Hector had the wolf inside him now._

_He could hear the sounds of the pack—his packmates—howling in the distance. Tomorrow night, the full moon, he would join them._

_He smiled to himself. He suddenly felt drained—he curled up and fell asleep, feeling safe and content in the trap that he had willingly crawled into._

* * *

“They all came back the next morning, but they wouldn’t let me out of the cage. All day long they would come by, sometimes to tell me how great it would be tonight, or to make fun of me, tell me that I would chicken out when the time finally came...hazing, I guess. The whole thing was designed to make me want to transform even more. I was going crazy by nightfall...the wolf was ready to come out, and there I was, trapped. I practically busted my shoulder against the bars, screaming, begging. You had your first change last night; I’m sure you can imagine.”

Vinh didn’t answer, but he thought he could understand. He remembered the previous night, the feeling that some force was dragging him outside. He shuddered.

“Finally they let me out. Led me to where the others were in a circle with a big bonfire—real ceremonial, I guess. Wanted my initiation to be all nice and official.”

* * *

_Alpha stood between Hector and the fire. He looked like a flaming ghost, lit with pale moonlight and a halo of orange-red._

_“What's your name?”_

_“Hector.”_

_“‘Hector’ is a human name,” Alpha sneered, moving closer. “Are you a human?”_

_“I’m Cub.” The previous Cub preened on the periphery of Hector’s vision._

_“And how do you feel, Cub? What do you want to do?”_

_He considered how to answer. It was hard for him to think clearly. He was standing there in the open, but his mind still felt locked in the cage. The beast in him was jittery, eager to break free._

_“I want to be a wolf.”_

_“And do what?”_

_He was stymied for half a second. “I wanna...run in the woods,” he guessed, and as the words came out he felt a rush of excitement. “Hunt something. I wanna kill.”_

_“Imagine you saw a deer right now. It’s running away from you. What would you do? How would you kill it?”_

_“I’d bite it’s neck!” The words came on instinct—he could see himself doing it, longed to feel the animal dying in his jaws. “Rip it open! Tear out its guts!”_

_“And what if you saw a human?”_

_“I’d kill him!”_

_Alpha leaned in closer. “But aren’t you a human yourself?”_

_“No! I’m a wolf now!”_

_“Wolves don’t wear clothes!” Alpha snapped, pointing. “Take them off.”_

_He did, feeling more and more crazed the quicker he undressed. Some of the older boys laughed, but once he was done he stood up straight and puffed out his chest, an animal refusing to show any weakness._

_“Do you feel embarrassed right now, Cub?”_

_“No! I’m a wolf!”_

_“No, but you’re close. Can you feel it, Cub?” Alpha lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “Can you feel the full moon, drawing it out?”_

_He could; its pull on his skin was stronger than the heat from the fire. He could feel the monster raging, and he was so desperate for it to come out that his eyes welled with tears. He nodded._

_“Then you just have to release it, Cub! Release it, and you’ll be a part of this pack forever. Now close your eyes. See yourself as a wolf.”_

_“I_ am _a wolf,” he murmured, but he let the image fill his mind—himself changing, rushing through the forest, and he felt power flowing down to the tips of his fingers and toes._

_“You_ are _a wolf, but you’re chained up. Now, see the human boy named Hector. See how weak he is. He’s wearing clothes, he’s going to school, he’s doing_ every stupid human thing _that you want to be free of. He’s the one holding the chain, keeping you from becoming what you truly are._

_“Now kill him, Cub. Let the beast out and rip him apart!”_

_He saw the stupid boy, and he hated him, and in his mind he leapt and heard the boy scream and realized that he was screaming in real life. He was on his knees, ripping Hector apart with his teeth as the wolf finally ripped him apart from the inside—he roared with triumph and shrieked in pain, eating Hector and being eaten by the wolf, tearing himself apart and losing himself and—_

* * *

Hector paused in his story.

“It feels good when it finally happens, doesn’t it?”

Vinh looked up, startled.

“No. It hurt like hell.”

“Yeah, but all that tension, and then it ends, and you’re just...gone. The human you doesn’t have to think anymore. You’re free to just indulge in every sick, violent dream that you’ve ever had, not caring about the consequences. You can’t tell me that you didn’t enjoy it.”

Vinh shook his head.

“No. I didn’t.” His voice shook, but it was low and dangerous.

Hector considered that, then shrugged.

“Then I guess that proves my point. Because even all these years later, that first night, those memories of running wild through the woods and ripping some deer to pieces...it was honestly the most fun that I’ve had in my entire life.”

* * *

_The next morning, Hector sat up slowly and then gazed down at himself. He was naked. More to the point, he was covered in blood down to his knees—his hair was matted with it, and bits of dirt and grass and fur were stuck all over his body. The taste of it was in his mouth. He had killed a deer, he remembered, and crawled almost entirely inside its body as he ripped out its tasty organs._

_The chase had been exciting, the feast delicious. He felt sadistic glee as he remembered crushing its neck in his mouth. In his newly-turned rage he had also attacked his new packmates, and the memory thrilled him even though it ended with him running away._

_But now he felt dazed. Some part of him knew that he shouldn’t feel happy about all this. So now he sat there on the ground, looking at his human body as if he couldn’t quite believe what had happened to it last night._

_“Hey, he’s over here!”_

_Some of the other werewolves, the younger ones, appeared through the trees, and suddenly they were all kneeling beside him and cheering. Everyone was patting him on the back or giving him playful punches on the arm. One said “Look at that_ blood! _” “Finally showed us what kind of animal you are!” said another. The former Cub, now Quickbite, pointed and laughed at tooth marks that he’d left on Hector’s arm._

_Hector began to smile as the others dragged him to his feet._

_Then Alpha stepped forward, followed by Beta and Klaw. Immediately everyone stopped celebrating and stood at attention. Hector tried not to tremble._

_Alpha grinned when he saw him. “Well, look at you! How do you feel?”_

_Hector hesitated, then held his stomach and said, in all honesty, “Full.”_

_Everyone laughed. Hector smiled nervously._

_“A fine answer! And did you have fun last night?”_

_“Yeah...yeah, I think so.”_

_“And you want to stay with your new pack? You don’t want to return to your old life as a human child?”_

_Hector didn’t hesitate—he stood up straight and said, “No. I’m a wolf now.”_

_Alpha smiled. Everyone was smiling. Hector felt very proud of himself._

_Then Alpha motioned down. “Look at yourself, Cub. Last night you were a wolf. Now what do you see?”_

_Hector looked, and again confusion dulled his happiness. He just saw himself, which made everything else seem very surreal. He felt a little weird about all of them being naked outside, and a little disturbed by the fact that they were all covered in blood._

_“Well, I’m human again.”_

_Alpha struck him across the face. Hector staggered, grabbing a boy named Ripper for support._

_“No, Cub. During the day we wear human skin, but from now until eternity you are a wolf. So what do you see?”_

_Cub, no longer Hector, righted himself and balled his hands into fists at his side. “I’m a wolf!”_

_All the older boys cheered. Hector grinned, trying to ignore the pain in his jaw._

* * *

Vinh looked horrified. “You weren’t freaked out at all?”

“Not nearly as much as I shouldn’t have been. Like I said, I was always messed up. If anything, my years with the pack were the only time that I felt comfortable in my own skin.”

He met Vinh’s eyes for just a moment. He didn’t seem particularly happy recalling the best period of his life.

* * *

“Anyway.

“I was with the pack for the next four years. During the day we'd sleep—just curled up on the ground, no tent or sleeping bag or anything. If it was cold we had some animal skins to use as blankets. Same with clothes. A lot of wild wolves reject them completely—see them as the ultimate symbol of humanity, of being tamed and civilized. Us guys mostly didn’t bother with them, unless it was the middle of winter or something. The girls were always dressed around us, though, because their mates didn’t want the rest of us staring.

"I was friends with the other kids—we’d wrestle, swim, race, whatever. I was the runt, but I wasn’t going to let anyone push me around. You still had to know your place, though. Show some spine when an older kid was an asshole, Alpha and his friends would take your side. But piss _them_ off, they’d get the whole pack to kick your ass until you puked blood. But I kept that balance pretty well, and it really did feel like having a family. I felt free. More free than I felt living with humans, at least.

“We had an RV. Never camped in it or anything, but after a few days or weeks in one forest we’d all pile in and drive someplace else. Go through cities sometimes. Alpha or Beta or Klaw would drive while most of us slept in the back. Sometimes they’d go out to get supplies or mug someone so we had a little money. I always wanted to go out and do something, but it was a long time before they let me. Looking back, I guess they worried that I’d bolt.

“We mostly avoided normal people. I know a lot of packs attack humans on purpose, but those wolves tend to captured or shot pretty quickly—Alpha and the others were too careful for that. It annoyed the hell of me. We spent so much time talking about humans, how much we hated them, how we’d kill them, and here we were hiding in the back whenever we pulled into a gas station. All talk, as fake as everything else about us.

“Of course, we’d always be back in the wilderness by nightfall. We changed every night. I know Alpha and some of the others had been through rehab before going wild, but if they could repress the change they never did. At the very least they had some control of themselves in wolf form. Us younger kids, the ones made by Alpha or the others—man, we were feral. Alpha forced us into line, but that’s not the same thing. Our _human_ minds were gone. He just managed to train our wolf instincts into following him.”

“Wouldn’t you all have attacked each other?” Vinh interrupted. 

He shifted in his seat. “I did attack them, that first night, for the same reason you attacked me—you’re extra crazy your first time, and I didn’t know them that well. But it gets complicated with werewolves that you know and change with all the time. They seem familiar, so you don’t think of them so much as threats or competition. My friend would be able to explain it better—he’s read whole books about werewolf psychology. Point is that we mostly got along, even if we’d snap at each other over food once in a while.” 

“The same thing happens a lot in those rehabs,” he added, giving Vinh a pointed look. “If you hang out with someone during the day, change together every night, even as wolves you’re less likely to fight. After you graduate you might still schedule your changes with the people you met there just because you’re comfortable with them. A ‘part-time pack,’ they call it.”

He rolled his eyes. Like he thought the idea was stupid, even as he was trying to entice Vinh to go to this place.

“Yeah, great. I don’t have any friends as a human, but now I can bond with my fellow monsters. What point are you even trying to make? You start telling me that being a werewolf isn’t so bad, but then you have a whole story about how much fun you had running around with a bunch of werewolf psychopaths!”

Hector huffed in annoyance. 

“My _point,_ if you’d been paying attention, is that I was an idiot. So before you go talking about going wild—“

"Okay _wow,_ you’re right. I sure don’t want to be like you, turning into a wolf every night and ripping apart animals. Except _oh wait,_ that’s gonna happen to me tonight _anyway_ and I can’t do anything about it except let the cops throw me into a special _kennel_ where I won’t hurt anybody else!”

He became louder and more breathless as his rant went on—by his final screech he could hear frightened birds taking off from the surrounding trees. 

Hector just stared at him, then shook his head with a humorless scoff.

“Kid, you don’t even know how well you’ve got it.”

“ _How well I—?!_ _You_ ran off and became a werewolf just to—get out of doing your homework or something! _I_ didn’t choose this! I actually _hurt_ someone last night!"

“Yeah, you hurt someone as a wolf!” Hector said, slamming down his carving and jumping to his feet. “You _didn’t_ choose anything! So why you acting so guilty? The police aren’t gonna blame you, you don’t have to blame yourself— _I_ gotta live with this curse knowing that I was stupid enough to ask for it. You think you’re the first werewolf to hurt somebody? Difference is, some of us don’t get to pass the buck for what we’ve done.”

Vinh winced. 

“...What did you do?” 

He caught something like shame on Hector’s face.

“Did you attack somebody? Like me?”

Vinh hoped that the answer was yes. Which he realized was kind of terrible, but it would have made him feel less alone.

“Not like you. That’s my point. _You_ at least have the excuse of being a wolf at the time."

* * *

“I’d been in the pack for two years. We hadn’t had any new members since. The guy who’d brought me in had been arrested and had his website taken down. Everyone was restless to get the pack growing again. I complained plenty myself—I was sick of being ‘Cub.’”

“Eventually Alpha came up with a new idea. We’d draft a kid. No choice or fancy initiation like I’d had, just grab someone and make him join whether he liked it or not.”

Vinh trembled in his seat. 

“You _kidnapped_ someone?” 

“Yeah. We were passing through another city the day before the full moon—or the day before the day before, whichever. Parked by the side of the road and just grabbed the first kid unlucky enough to be walking by when no one else was around. 

“It was an eleven-year-old boy—which sucked, because most of us horny teenagers were hoping for an older girl. Alpha and some of the others dragged him inside the RV. They covered his mouth so he couldn’t scream, but he was kicking and fighting as much as he could.” 

Hector paused, looking up at the treetops.

“He almost got away. Ripper was holding onto him while the adults went to start the RV. The kid was wearing shoes, Ripper wasn’t, so he stomped down on his foot. He almost made it to the RV door. But do you know what stopped him?”

“What?”

Hector tapped himself on the chest. 

“I tried to grab him, fell on my stomach like an idiot—but his leg was right there, and he was wearing shorts, so I bit down on his calf as hard as I could, same way I’d crush a deer’s neck. He yelped and fell right in front of the door. Everybody jumped on top of him, and we drove off.”

Hector’s eyes fell back to the wood in his hands. He went back to carving.

“Alpha kicked the poor kid in the face, he was crying like a baby, and there I was, feeling so fucking proud of myself.”

* * *

“We sped out of town and got as deep in the woods as we could before nightfall. Had the hold the kid’s head and force him to look into Alpha’s eyes, then threw him in the cage so the rest of us could transform. Didn’t let him out the next morning, just loaded him back into the RV and tried to put as much distance as we could between us and anyone who might come looking for him.

“He begged us to let him out all day, of course. We all called him a crybaby, terrified him about what it was going to be like when he changed that night.”

“You too?”

“Yeah. The way I thought of it, the way Alpha and the others described it, we were saving this stupid kid from a worthless life as a human.”

“Ah, so you tormented your kidnapping victim for his own good. Got it.” 

Vinh made no attempt to keep the disgust from his voice. Hector made no attempt to defend himself.

“Of course, once the full moon came out the boy started going crazy. He was staring at the sky, pulling his clothes, but clearly trying to resist the change. Alpha kept talking to him, sometimes trying to coax him, sometimes threatening him, telling him there was no use. The kid was getting more feral, snarling and scratching but then going back to crying and pleading.

“Then Alpha started to howl.”

* * *

“AWOOOOOO!”

_The kid stared from between the bars of the cage. So did Cub and the others, standing around in their human forms and watching. Alpha turned to them, waving his hand and smirking._

_“Come along, friends, sing with me._ AWOOOOOO!”

_Cub didn’t understand, but he joined the others. It was easy enough to do—the wolf was clawing at his own chest, desperate to come out, so his howl came out more lupine than he could have managed during the day._

“AWOOOOOO! AWOOOOOO!”

“A-OOOO!” _the boy in the cage suddenly screamed, as though the sound were ripping its way out of his throat._ “A-OOOO!”

_Now Cub understood. When they were wolves and one of them howled, it was obvious that the others would join in—wolves howled in harmony with their friends, they howled warning at their enemies, it was one of their most basic instincts. This kid, so close to his first and most primal change, couldn’t help but join in too, even if he didn’t want to. And each time he did his resistance grew weaker. Cub felt it himself—his wolf mind was getting wilder the more he belted out with the others._

“AWOOOOOO! AWOOOOOO!” _the pack sang as the boy gave a half-sobbed_ “A-OOOO!”

_Finally Alpha held out his hand for silence. It took several seconds—Cub was so riled up that he_ couldn’t _stop, nor could most of the others. His skin was itching with the urge to fully transform. He fought it down with great effort, not wanting to lose control until he saw what happened with their new member._

_The kid was throwing himself against the bars now, still howling. Alpha calmly bent down and undid the lock._

_Instantly the kid shot out, tripped, then picked himself up and ran into the woods on all fours, still screaming and howling in pain._

_Cub and several others made to chase after him. Alpha held up his hand again._

_“Just a moment. Listen.”_

_First they heard the sound of a little boy shrieking “_ A-OOOO! _” into the night, growing more distant each second._

_Then they heard screaming._

_Then they heard a real howl, stuttering and pained but clearly belonging to an actual wolf._

_Cub, who was no longer the pack’s Cub, had just enough time to grin before the change overtook him and his human sadism was consumed by the simpler violence of the beast._

* * *

“The adults had enough control in wolf form to track the kid through the night. Once it was morning they grabbed him and dragged him back to camp. He’d lost his clothes, of course, and we didn’t even give him a chance to clean up, just threw him in the cage and got back in the RV. He did nothing but scream and cry until he finally passed out from exhaustion.

“The same basic thing happened the next night—we kept him caged up until it was time to transform, then brought him back to camp the next morning. I’m not sure how long that went on. After a while they didn’t have to drag him—he would walk back with whoever found him first. Eventually he would just come on his own like the rest of us, no chaperone required.”

“Why didn’t he try to escape?” Vinh demanded.

Hector shrugged. “Where to? By this point we were hundreds of miles from where we took him, and every night we were in the middle of some forest, miles and miles from civilization. Weeks had passed. He adjusted. We didn’t leave him much of a choice.”

Vinh was silent. He was starting to hate Hector by now. 

“He was Cub now. I started going by Shadowfang—and don’t tell me that’s a stupid name, because I already know. I was thirteen. Wanted to be Shadow _claw,_ anyway, but we already had a Klaw, so...anyway. Our new Cub wasn’t like me—very meek, let everyone else push him around. Guess I can’t blame him. They’d hit him a lot, blame him for things that weren’t his fault, laugh at him for crying or acting human. I tried to toughen him up, take him under my wing. I was probably his only friend there.”

“ _Friend?!_ You helped kidnap him!”

Hector’s tone was blunt and angry. “Yeah, I did. But the kid needed a friend. Don’t blame him for taking what he got. And like I said, he seemed to have accepted his place in the pack. He would play with us, go swimming with us, even beg us to take him along if we tried to exclude him. Seemed like Alpha was right, and he had finally realized that life with us was better than what he’d left behind.”

He paused, thinking.

“I remember one morning, maybe six or seven months after he’d joined us. We’d gotten separated from the others during the night and were making our way back to camp…”

* * *

_“Are you sure this is the way?” Cub asked, following behind his older friend._

_“Sure. Heh, look. You even left us a clue!”_

_Shadowfang pointed. There was a large pile of animal droppings on the ground, and sure enough Cub could remember making it the previous night. He blushed, ducking his head to the ground._

_“Yeah, alright.”_

_They walked on for a while. Shadowfang began to absentmindedly lick his fingers, still dirty with the fawn that they’d killed last night._

_“Hey, we’re friends, right?”_

_“Yeah.” Shadowfang was scratching off the blood on his neck now._

_“Does that mean we can tell each other secrets?”_

_“What kind of secrets?”_

_“Like—what’s your real name?”_

_Shadowfang turned and gave Cub a hard look._

_“Shadowfang.”_

_“No, your real name.”_

_“_ Shadowfang. _” He stopped walking now, glaring down at his friend. He was almost a foot taller than Cub and already quite muscular for a boy of thirteen._

_He expected Cub to be cowed. But after a moment the younger boy suddenly snarled and tackled him to the ground. He was a whirlwind of punches and kicks and shouts, and Shadowfang was so surprised that he couldn’t find an opening to counter his wild, frantic movements._

_“I’M YOUR FRIEND!” Cub screamed, his fists colliding with Shadowfang’s face, chest and arms. “TELL ME YOUR REAL NAME!”_

_“Alright! It’s—Hector!” In the back of his mind he was surprised that it took him a second to remember._

_Cub stopped fighting. For a moment he just knelt on Shadowfang’s torso, then slowly climbed off, breathing very hard._

_“My name is Geoffrey. It’s spelled the weird way. ‘G-E-O’ at the beginning, an ‘e’ before the ‘y’ at the end.”_

_Shadowfang didn’t say anything. He was still lying on his back, so from his perspective the smaller boy suddenly looked much taller. They were both naked and dirty from the previous night, and Cub’s hand was bloodstained as he pointed down at him._

_“If you tell anyone about this, I’ll fucking kill you.”_

_Shadowfang believed him. Or at least believed that he might try._

_Suddenly Cub looked small again. His voice trembled as he spoke._

_“You’re so stupid. You don’t even realize how much they’ve hurt us.”_

_And with that he ran off toward the camp, leaving Shadowfang lying confused on the ground._

* * *

“Did Geoffrey ever get free?”

That, Vinh told himself, was the only reason he was still listening to this story. He knew Hector’s fate, but honestly wouldn't have cared if he somehow stayed with that awful pack forever.

Hector nodded. “Yeah. It was about...a year and half later, I guess. Two years after he joined us. I never told anyone about the name thing—probably would have gotten us _both_ in trouble—and after a while I pretty much forgot about it. Like I said, he seemed integrated, and I thought—I _wanted_ to think that he was happy with us.

“Now like I told you, the pack was almost all guys. You got a girlfriend, Vinh?”

He glowered. The last thing he wanted to talk about was his personal life. “No.”

“Well, you’re in luck, because human girls go crazy for werewolf boys. Only thing I liked about living with humans again. You’d be amazed how quick a girl’ll spread her legs for a dangerous man with a sob story.”

He gave Vinh a sly look. Vinh felt his face burn and hunched up his shoulders. “Do you have a point?”

“ _Hmph,"_ Hector said, put-out by his disinterest. "Well. They might be crawling over themselves to get in bed with us, but they don’t seem all that excited about the wild lifestyle. When I joined there were three girls in our pack, all paired up—some of the older guys were allowed out in the city to pick up chicks once in a while, but the rest of us were outta luck. Eventually we got some more girls, though. Wild wolves from another pack. We won ‘em in a fight.”

“So you kidnapped them too?”

Hector shrugged. “Depends how you look at it. Don’t know if they wanted to join us, but they came willingly after Alpha beat up their leader. Anyway. One of them was named Nightpelt. She was a little older than me. As soon as she joined she was claimed by Klaw, but he was almost thirty and she didn’t like him much. Went along with it, but she and I started seeing each other on the side. ‘Til one day Klaw and Alpha followed us away from the camp and we were caught, what’s the term— _in flagrante delicto._

“Well, Nightpelt made it out like I’d forced her into it—I don’t think Klaw believed her, but he was willing to pretend like he did. So then I had him and Alpha both wailing on me. I tried to fight back, but…well, two-on-one. It was evening by then, and they were planning to drag me back to camp, chain me up, maybe let the rest of the pack kill me after we all transformed.

“Then he showed up.”

* * *

_Shadowfang opened one eye, which was already starting to swell shut, and looked up from his spot in the dirt. Cub had entered the clearing, very deliberately not looking at his friend on the ground. He wore a shirt and pants, which wasn’t_ too _strange, since he liked to wear clothes no matter how much the others made fun of him for it. He was standing tall and rigid, eyes wide and his hands shoved into his pockets._

_“The fuck you want?” said Alpha, his voice soft but raspy. “We’re kinda busy right now.”_

_“Beta—back at the camp. He sent me to tell you something.”_

_“What?”_

_Cub took one hand out, motioning like he wanted to whisper something in Alpha’s ears. It was odd, but not suspicious enough for Alpha to refuse. He came closer, bending down to the boy’s level._

_In a flash the other hand shot out, driving a steak knife into Alpha’s eye._

_He screamed. Just as quickly Cub had the knife out again and slashed at his thigh. Alpha fell down, even as Nightpelt screamed and Klaw rushed forward, roaring._

_Cub dropped to the ground. Shadowfang assumed that he fell, but once Klaw reached him he reached around his leg and stabbed down into his calf. Klaw screamed and fell as Cub quickly scooted away along the dirt, then jumped up._

_For half a second he stood frozen. He had blood on his face and clothes. It looked strange. Shadowfang saw him covered in blood every morning, but this time it was splattered differently. There was less of it, but somehow it made him look terrifying. His eyes were wide with fear, but his lip was curled in rage._

_“RUN!”_

_Cub ran past Shadowfang, in the opposite direction of their camp. Shadowfang got to his feet and stumbled after him. Klaw tried to grab him, but Shadowfang jammed his elbow into his face and got free._

_Everyone was screaming. Shadowfang ran after his friend._

_He spared a look back at Nightpelt. She looked scared and frozen, but then went to Klaw, acting like she was concerned about him. He pushed her away, angrily, then tried to stumble after the runaways. Alpha couldn’t even get to his feet._

* * *

Hector hesitated for a long moment.

“Nightpelt was pregnant when I left.”

Vinh blinked. 

“Didn’t know it at the time. _She_ probably didn’t. I found out years later, after the cops finally broke the pack up. She had a son, and from the look of him everyone in the pack could tell that he was mine. Klaw hated him, and the whole pack treated him like a whipping boy from what I hear.”

Vinh shifted in his seat.

“He’s not a werewolf, right?”

“Oh, he is. Didn’t _inherit_ it, mind you, but they put him through the change when he was still a toddler. He’s lucky he survived—most kids that age don’t.”

Vinh shuddered. He couldn’t imagine a little kid going through what he had gone through the previous night.

“...What happened to him?”

“Adopted out. I never met him,” he added, before Vinh could ask. “Got a bit of third-party contact, but...I mean, the kid spent his first few years abused and has been changing ever since. Got a hard enough life as it is, don’t you think?”

* * *

_Cub led the way as they ran. Shadowfang followed without question; he was still a mess from Alpha and Klaw’s beating and didn’t feel like pulling rank on his rescuer._

_There was a river, the same one that they’d drank from and bathed in since arriving in this forest. Cub stopped, doubled over, looked behind them and said “Let it carry you. That’ll lose our scent.”_

_“But—”_

_“DO IT!”_

_He jumped in. Shadowfang followed._

_The current was strong enough that Shadowfang had to struggle to keep his head above water, but not swift enough that they couldn’t crawl back on land after several long minutes. Cub was shivering and dripping wet, but he looked up at the last glimmer of daylight and then pointed in the opposite direction. “East,” he said. “Come on.”_

_“Wait—shouldn’t we be on the other side of the river? Then the others—”_

_But Cub was already running off. Shadowfang growled but followed._

_As they ran he tried to think. They’d been about a quarter-mile from camp...with their injuries, how long would it take Alpha and Klaw to get back and round up the rest of the pack to chase them? How long until they all transformed, and how would that affect things? All Shadowfang knew for sure was that they had to keep moving. Cub certainly didn’t need to be told, walking swiftly and saying “East east east east” repeatedly under his breath._

_The forest got darker and colder. The boys both shivered, still damp from the river. After a few hours Shadowfang felt the wolf clawing at his insides._

_“We’re about to change.”_

_“Yeah.” Cub sounded distracted. He stopped, took off his shirt and then tied the long sleeves together. He put it around his neck, then began to do the same with his pants. “Just keep heading east.”_

_“Why? And what if we—”_

_Shadowfang didn’t finish—he doubled over. A second later Cub did the same._

_A minute later they were wolves._

_They heard howls in the distance. Far away, but angry._

_They kept running. Danger was an instinct that werewolves could still understand._

_And Cub’s mantra had worked. Through the fog in his mind, he had one human thought: East. East. East._

* * *

_They moved all night. Sometimes Shadowfang veered off-course, but his instinct was still to stay with Cub, so when Cub howled he would return to his side. It was the first night when he didn’t even try to hunt anything._

_The howls of the other wolves grew more distant. By dawn they had stopped._

_Light spread over the forest. The two werewolves kept walking even as they felt the change brewing inside of them. Finally they fell, bodies overtaken by pain. Their fur vanished, their muscles withered and shrank, and soon they became two teenage boys crouching on their hands and feet in the dirt._

_Shadowfang collapsed onto his stomach. He needed to rest. But Cub, looking pale and weak, climbed shakily to his feet. He looked around._

_“Where are my clothes?” he asked hoarsely._

_“I dunno. I think you shook them off sometime last night.”_

_Cub deflated. “Of course I did. Come on,” he said, walking off._

_“I think we lost them.”_

_“_ Come on. _”_

_He kept going. Shadowfang reluctantly followed._

* * *

_“Where’d you get that knife, anyway?”_

_“I found it on the ground a few months ago. Probably left over from somebody’s campsite.”_

_“Huh. Pretty clever. And pretty badass.” Shadowfang tried to laugh, but nerves and tiredness made it come out as a strange sort of titter. “You know, I was getting pretty sick of Alpha’s shit anyway. Asshole thinks he can tell us what to do. Nightpelt liked me better. Why do he and Klaw get to decide who mates with who?”_

_Cub kept walking._

_“You and I can start our own pack. I don’t know, we’ll find more werewolves eventually. Maybe make our own. Guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Cub’ anymore. Who do you want to be now?”_

_His voice was hard. “I’m Geoffrey.”_

_Goosebumps prickled on the back of Shadowfang’s neck._

_“Come on, man. That’s a_ human _name.”_

_Cub drew in a breath. Shadowfang turned and saw what he was looking at._

_They had reached the edge of the forest. A highway was visible through the last stretch of bushes._

* * *

Hector scoffed. 

“Why had he hidden that knife? And the way he stabbed them—in the legs, so they couldn’t run after us. How had he known where the road was? He’d planned this. I bet he’d started to pay attention every time we stopped—which direction the road was, which way the nearest water flowed. 

“This wasn’t my rescue. This was his escape. But he was always cautious, meek. I guess saving me is what spurred him to finally act. Don’t know if he’d have ever done it otherwise. But still, I was secondary. 

“But I didn’t see that then. So when a car drove by and I was already trying to hide in the trees, I was honestly, _stupidly_ shocked to see him race out into the middle of the street.”

* * *

_“CUB! What are you—?”_

_But the younger boy wasn’t listening; he ran into the middle of the street, waving to get the car’s attention. For a wild moment Shadowfang was sure that it would keep going and hit him, but it slammed to a stop several feet away. Moving through the trees for a better look, he saw a man and woman in the front seats while the back held three teenagers, two girls and one boy._

_Cub was standing still now, breathing deeply._

_The driver’s side door opened and the man got out, shouting and staring incredulously as he stormed up to him. Cub began to speak, too quietly for Shadowfang to make out what he was saying._

_At first he spoke to the man the way that Shadowfang would have spoken to Alpha, with his back straight and his head held high, determined not to show fear._

_Then his shoulders started to slump. He gazed over at the car, his hands slowly moving to cover his nakedness._

_Then he started to sob, bent over, using one arm to try and block the tears running down his face._

_Suddenly the other car doors opened. The woman rushed out, first handing wads of tissue to Cub and then having a rapid conversation with her husband. One of the girls came out with an old, dirty towel. The boy actually took off his shirt and gave it to Cub to wear. He kept crying as he put them on._

_The man took out his cell phone and made a call, pacing back and forth in the lane. The woman led Cub to sit in the car with the door still open, speaking softly to him as the teenagers looked on._

_Suddenly she looked up and glanced at the trees, her children following her gaze. Shadowfang sucked in a breath and tried to crouch deeper into hiding._

_He trembled. He knew that he should run, but he couldn’t. Cub was all that he had left now, so how could he—after everything they had been through, all the freedom that the pack had given him, how was—_

_More vehicles appeared. Two police cars followed by an ambulance, though none of them used their sirens._

_A policewoman spoke to the adults, then Cub, kneeling down next to the car. The other cops, as well as the paramedics, hung back and looked around nervously._

_Cub spoke for a minute, started to cry again, then spoke some more. The policewoman said something in response. Cub hesitated, murmured something, and then pointed at the woods, right where Shadowfang had been standing a moment before._

_The next thing Shadowfang knew the cops were rushing toward him._

_He tried to run. For a minute it seemed like it would work—he had a lot more experience moving through the trees, after all. But it was no use. Within minutes he had been tackled to the ground, handcuffed and was being dragged out of the forest, screaming and thrashing with all his might._

_“LET ME GO! FUCKING HUMANS! LET ME GO!_ AWOOOO! AWOOOO! _”_

_He barely noticed the human family recoiling in fear as he was pushed past them. One cop was opening the back door of the police car, and Shadowfang was doing everything in his power not to be forced inside it._

“Hector!”

_He turned. The boy he still thought of as ‘Cub’ was trying to run toward him, but the policewoman was keeping him from coming closer._

_To anyone else he would have looked ridiculous in an over-sized shirt with a pink towel wrapped around his waist, but Shadowfang could only tremble with rage at the sight. But what caught his attention more, for whatever reason, was his face. All the dirt from their night of running was smeared with tears, and more were building in eyes that were wide and fearful._

_Shadowfang snarled at him._

_“BASTARD! HOW COULD YOU?! TRAITOR! HUMAN PIECE OF SHIT!”_

_He didn’t get to say more, at least not that Cub could hear. The cops shoved him in the back of the police car and slammed the door._

* * *

Hector made a few last marks on whatever he was carving, then blew on it and regarded it thoughtfully.

“I won’t bother with the details of what happened next. Long story short, I was forced into rehab. Fought it every single day, which means that it didn’t help me at all. Tried to put me in an adult program after I aged out, but that wasn’t gonna do any good either. So I wound up here.”

He paused, and then flicked one finger across his face. He might have been moving a stray hair from in front of his eye, but to his surprise Vinh thought he saw a drop of water go flying.

“Y’know, it’s funny. I didn’t mind running away from the pack so much, but getting dragged off like that...it hurt more than I can tell you. I was so pissed, too. Geoffrey got to go back to his family, but I got torn away from the only life where I’d ever felt like I belonged. Man, I was a messed up kid.” 


	3. Geoffrey and Vinh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Brady arrives and, with gentle insistence, forces Vinh to start putting his life back together.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Vinh jumped to see a man coming up behind him. He was about as tall as Hector, but skinny, with brown hair that was neatly swept back. His button-down shirt, dark blue tie and horn-rimmed glasses made him look very incongruous, stepping out of the trees into the cluttered clearing with its shabbier inhabitants. 

“Ah. Finally, the professional has arrived,” Hector said, rising to his feet. “Look at you, you piece of shit. Did you even change last night?”

Vinh blinked in surprise, but the man smiled. 

“I did, actually. Then afterwards I _combed my hair._ You should try it.”

Hector snorted, then turned to Vinh.

“This is the kid. Vinny, say hello to ‘Dr. Brady.’ He’s a therapist at the werewolf center you’ll be staying at.”

Dr. Brady smiled, extending his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Vinny.”

Vinh looked away, face burning as he rose to his feet. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of Hector’s oversized jeans.

“It’s Vinh, not Vinny.”

Dr. Brady lowered his hand without looking the least bit perturbed. “That’s what you preferred to be called?”

“It’s my name. I mean—it’s Vietnamese. Not short for anything.” His tone shifted from surliness to resigned exasperation, as though he had explained this many times before in his life. 

Mr. Brady chuckled.

“Ah. I can relate. Tell you what, Vinh, until we get to the lycanthropy center you can just call me ‘Geoffrey.’ That’s with a G-E-O at the beginning, ‘e’ before the ‘y’ at the end.”

Vinh started. Hector sighed, clasping his friend on the shoulder. 

“Yeah, I was actually just telling him how we met,” he drawled. Geoffrey looked surprised. “This little asshole was thinking about going wild.”

“No I wasn’t,” Vinh said quickly. He looked down at his bare feet. “I—I said that, but I didn’t mean it. I wasn’t going to, even if…”

He refused to look at Geoffrey’s face, but when the man spoke his voice was soft.

“No need to be upset, Vinh. Whether you meant it or not, I’m glad you realize it was a mistake to say. Now, are you ready to go?”

_No,_ Vinh thought. He was ready to get far away from Hector, but not to go anywhere that Geoffrey planned to bring him.

“I guess.”

“Good. But first, Hector—I have a bit of news that you need to hear.”

Vinh finally looked up. The two adults drew closer to the doorstep of the cabin. Geoffrey was whispering something. Hector’s face was impassive.

Several thoughts passed through Vinh’s mind. What was Geoffrey doing here? How the hell could he act so buddy-buddy with his former kidnapper? He looked so calm, but just from hearing the story Vinh wanted to run up to Hector and kick him in the crotch. It almost seemed worth the beating that Hector could surely give him in retaliation. 

But Geoffrey himself was an enigma; he would have never put this guy together with the one from Hector’s story. This man didn’t look like an abused kid. He didn’t look like someone who could stab you in the eye, either. He looked like—well, a guidance counselor. Vinh hadn’t even realized that he was a werewolf until Hector had mentioned it.

He kind of scolded himself for that. Werewolves could look like anyone, after all—they were just normal people when they weren’t transformed. _He_ was a werewolf, after all, though it still felt weird to remember. Honestly, looking at Geoffrey made Vinh feel even worse about that; the guy was so calm and put-together while he felt like a wreck. 

He tried to hear what Geoffrey was saying, but all he heard was Hector’s response.

“Good, good. And you tell him I said that.”

“I could arrange for _you_ to tell him yourself,” Geoffrey murmured as they headed back towards Vinh.

“Yeah, I know when to let a professional handle things. And speaking of which. I got one more thing to say to you, kid.”

Hector picked up what he’d been carving before sauntering over. Vinh scowled and took a step back.

Unperturbed, Hector held out the piece of wood. Vinh kept glaring at his face, then looked down when curiosity overcame him.

Carved into the wood was the outline of a werewolf—a rougarou standing on its hind legs, head up as though howling to the sky. Inside of it, however, was a second figure, a human-shaped outline that was gazing up in the same direction.

“You know what this is, Vinny?”

“A werewolf that just ate somebody?”

He snorted and rolled his eyes.

“Look, kid. You got a monster inside you. You didn’t choose that, and there’s nothing you can do to get rid of it. But see Geoffrey over there?” He nodded at his friend, and Vinh couldn’t help but look back at him. “The same’s true for him. _I’m_ the only one here dumb enough to have put it there on purpose.

“Here’s something that you’re gonna hear a lot during your stay in rehab: it’s what’s inside that counts. I’m not talking about the wolf. You feel bad for hurting your foster mom? You should. Good people feel bad when they do bad things. And you know what? That good person is still inside you when you change into a wolf, same way that the wolf is inside you now. So keep focusing on that, until Vinh the Good Person is so strong that he can keep the monster from doing any more bad things.” 

He shoved the carving into Vinh’s chest. He took it, then resisted the urge to throw it back in Hector’s face.

“Excellent advice,” Geoffrey said. “If only you could follow it yourself, eh?” 

Hector waved them off, already heading for the cabin.

“Sorry I couldn’t do a garwalf,” he added. “Couldn’t really figure out how to make the human look right when the wolf's on all fours. Anyway. Keep the clothes, unless Geoffrey wants to bring them back sometime. And good luck. Not that I think you’ll need it.”

* * *

They walked in silence to the road, where a slightly beat-up silver car was waiting for them. Vinh climbed awkwardly into the passenger’s seat. There was a baby’s car seat in the back, empty except for a pink teddy bear.

Geoffrey put the key in the ignition but didn’t start the car. 

“So. Before we head back to town, is there anything you want to talk about?”

Vinh stared down at his lap. “Not really.”

“How are you feeling? And don’t feel like you have to sugarcoat. I know how difficult this whole situation can be.”

“You don’t know anything,” Vinh snapped, though as soon as he said it he realized how petty and stupid he sounded. “Do we have to go back to town? Can’t we just go straight to the werewolf center or whatever?”

“I’m afraid not. As it is Hector had to arrange special permission for me to come and get you. We have to go to the police station and—”

“The police station?! Why are we going there?!”

“Calm down, Vinh,” he said, and his own tone was infuriatingly placid. “You’re technically a missing person right now. Hector arranged for me to get you, but we need to clear that up and submit a statement about what happened last night.”

“So what?” Vinh said, his voice trembling. “Am I going to jail or something?”

Geoffrey thought for a moment. “Vinh...I am aware that your foster mother was hurt last night.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose! They can’t arrest me for that!”

“They won’t, Vinh. Werewolves are almost never charged for something that happens during their first transformation. You weren’t in control of your actions, you didn’t know that this was going to happen—I understand that, the police will understand—”

“I don’t fucking care what you think!”

Geoffrey was silent. Vinh seethed, waiting for him to say something, and then threw himself back in his seat, staring straight ahead.

“...Are you ready to talk now?”

“Fuck off!”

“We can talk, or I can just drive to town right now. Your call.”

Impulsively, Vinh tried to open the door to the car. The lock clicked just as he grabbed the door handle. He trembled with anger.

A long silence stretched.

“When we go back...are we gonna have to see my foster parents?”

Geoffrey spoke very carefully. “Your social worker will be meeting us at the police station. I assume she’ll want you to see them. Don’t _you_ t hink that you should?”

Vinh’s voice was thick. “No.” He shrank in his seat. “Is—is she okay?”

“All I know is that she’s in the hospital.”

“...I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“I understand.”

“No. No, you don’t.” Vinh pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. “I’m not usually like this. I—I think there’s something wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Vinh.”

Vinh felt like he couldn’t breathe. “Of course there is. I wanted to kill Mrs. Robinson last night. And right now—I don’t even feel like myself right now. I can still feel— _it,_ you know?”

“The werewolf?”

“Yeah. It’s like—I changed back this morning, but it didn’t go away. I still can’t think straight, I’m still—angry. When I was a wolf that’s all I was, I just wanted to— _kill_ everything, and it’s like that anger is still there.” He pulled his legs onto the car seat. “There were times—before last night, where it kind of took control of me, made me do—stuff I wouldn’t normally do. And now I feel like it’s been in control since I turned back. At least a little.”

He looked at Geoffrey fearfully. The older man nodded, but he said “You’re wrong. That’s not why you’re acting this way.”

“Aren’t you listening?! I—”

“Vinh, there probably _are_ times when you felt the werewolf inside of you before last night—that happens to a lot of people. But that’s because it was bottled up, struggling to get out. That won’t happen now that you’ve started transforming. Did you sleep at all last night?” he asked suddenly. “Or this morning?”

“...A little,” Vinh said, but privately thought that his time in Hector’s cabin probably shouldn’t count.

“What, maybe an hour? Vinh, you experienced something very traumatic last night, you’re worried about your foster mother, and you’re running on barely any sleep. This isn’t the werewolf making you angry. It’s _human_ nature. It’s nothing to feel worried about.”

Vinh felt shaky all of a sudden. He realized that he was still clutching the carving that Hector had made. He set it down on the dashboard without looking at it.

“What about those werewolves who kidnapped you?” he muttered. “They acted like monsters even when they were humans.”

To his surprise, Geoffrey laughed.

“Yes. And they used that same logic—that werewolves are _always_ beasts, that they can’t act like humans—and shouldn’t even try. But you know, wolves don’t kidnap other animals to join their packs. They don’t pick fights with other packs and trade members like chattel. And they don’t come up with stupid rationalizations to explain what they do."

He paused, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. There were dark, heavy bags beneath them. Somehow the sight hit Vinh in the gut. He really _had_ changed the previous night. He really did know what he was talking about. 

“So I’m going to tell you something, Vinh, something that I also tell the kids at the center. I forgive you for yelling at me just now. I understand if you sometimes act out because living with our condition makes you tired or stressed or guilty. I’m a counselor. I’m here to help you with all that.

“But do _not_ blame your bad behavior on ‘the wolf inside,’ or claim that you can’t help it because you’re a monster, or anything like that. That’s just a comforting lie that people tell themselves to get out of acting like decent human beings. I had to deal with that shit for two years, and I’m not going to tolerate it anymore.”

The slightest edge crept into his voice, though his eyes were, if anything, a bit sad.

Vinh looked away. He wasn’t sure if he should feel relieved or ashamed.

* * *

“I won’t be with you much once we get there,” Geoffrey said as they drove back to town. “Your social worker will be there to do most of the legwork. 

“Someone will take you both into a room and ask you about what happened last night—both with your foster mother and where you went afterwards. Just try to answer as honestly as you can—it’s no big deal if you can’t remember every detail. Remember, you’re not in trouble. At most you’ll get a lecture about how to prevent accidents in the future.

“Now, they’re going to have to add you to the Werewolf Registry. They’ll take your picture, your height and weight—”

“So a mugshot?”

Geoffrey smiled wryly. “It does feel a bit like that, yes. It’s just so that they can keep track of you even when you get out of rehab, make sure that you’re staying safe. They’ll also need some information about your werewolf form—the center will send that in when we have it.”

“Isn’t the registry, like...open to the public? So that anyone who googles my name will find out that I’m a werewolf?”

Geoffrey’s expression got more sour. “In this state, yes.”

“Great.” Vinh looked out the window. “And I have to go to rehab? Like, today?”

“That would be ideal. You’re going to change again tonight, and if you’re not there other arrangements will have to be made.” Geoffrey turned to him. “Are you nervous about going?”

“I’m nervous about everything. I don’t think I’m ready to be a werewolf.”

“Do you want to know a secret?” Geoffrey said as they pulled into the parking lot of the police station. “Nobody ever is.”

* * *

Getting processed at the police station wasn’t a pleasant experience, but Vinh got through it with help from Geoffrey and his social worker. After that they talked about what to do with him.

His social worker called his foster father in the hospital. She spoke to him in a low voice, then handed her phone to Vinh. “He wants to talk to you,” she whispered.

He took the phone. He put it to his ear. But before Mr. Robinson could finish saying “Vinh?” he held it back out to her, shaking his head.

“Vinh, he wants to talk to you.”

Vinh kept shaking his head. She sighed, took the phone back and turned away. He heard her say something like “still a bit in shock.” Then, “no...I think it will be better if I drive him.”

She hung up. Gave him a sympathetic look. Said Mrs. Robinson was alright, but they wanted him to come to the hospital. 

He asked if Geoffrey could take him. The words just sort of came out; he wasn’t even sure why. But Geoffrey agreed, and she reluctantly consented. 

Now he sat in the car, fidgeting. He was trying to think of anything but what would happen when he finally saw his foster parents.

They went through a drive-thru. Vinh still felt nauseous at the thought of food, but he got a milkshake while Geoffrey ordered a coffee. They parked and sipped their drinks in silence. Vinh was grateful for the transparent stalling tactic.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Alright.”

“Why are you friends with Hector? He helped kidnap you. He even said that you would have gotten away except that he jumped up and attacked you!”

Geoffrey fiddled with his stirrer. He smiled.

“You sound so indignant on my behalf.” Then he frowned. “And you’re right. There were times when I really hated Hector. But he was also my best friend during those very difficult years. And he didn’t really know what he was doing. Not really.”

“Yes he did! He admitted that himself!” Vinh shifted in his seat to face him. “It’s like you said—those wild werewolves _chose_ to act like that when they were human! How is he any different?”

“Well...he was essentially brainwashed. He joined the pack when he was eleven, and it was the only place where he’d ever felt truly accepted.” Geoffrey took a sip of his coffee. “But that’s not the real answer. The real answer is that he feels so damn guilty about it. He doesn’t make excuses for what he did. Quite the opposite. Rehab and therapy helped him realize how much he’s screwed up, but he didn’t let it fix the underlying problems, the reasons _why_ he went wild in the first place. So now he just sees himself as hopelessly broken.”

Vinh stared at his drink in his hand.

“Maybe he’s right. I still don’t understand how you can forgive him.”

“...Is that what you’re worried about? That your foster parents won’t be able to forgive you?”

Vinh’s head whipped up. His teeth clenched, but his voice trembled as he said “That’s different!”

“What’s different?”

“What—what I did and what he did!"

“You’re right. You’re right,” he repeated, because Vinh looked like he was going to start yelling again. “What you and Hector _did_ is different. But I worry that your mindset is the same. That you see your actions as unforgivable, even though you know that you weren’t in control of yourself."

Vinh closed his eyes tightly, holding back tears.

“I—I wanted to hurt her. I mean—there was a second, before I attacked, when I—I didn’t even try to stop myself, not really, but I tried to warn her. But when I actually did it, I—I really wanted to kill her."

“ _You weren’t in control of yourself,_ ” Geoffrey repeated firmly. “You were lost in the werewolf’s mind. Vinh, I know how you feel. I mean it. _I’ve felt the same way._ But the real Vinh was the man who tried to shout a warning, not the monster that took over and made you do things that you wouldn’t have chosen on your own.”

Vinh didn’t know what to say. A long silence ensued.

“Your milkshake is melting.”

Vinh took a sip. Then he said, tentatively, “Is it this hard for everyone?”

"Everybody is different. But yes, it’s hard for all of us.”

“Yeah...sorry. I guess I must sound pretty whiny to you,” he muttered, wiping his eye. “I could never have survived what you went through.”

"It’s hardly a competition, Vinh." He paused. "But yes, I went through a very hard time. Rehab helped me. I learned that there were kids like me—nice, normal kids, and counselors, who understood at least some of what I was going through. Including ones who have had accidents, like you had with Mrs. Robinson.”

Vinh’s throat tightened. “Oh.”

Geoffrey smiled wanly and drank the last of his coffee. 

“The point is, it’s okay to feel lost, Vinh. The important thing is that you don’t _stay_ lost. That’s Hector’s problem, and I don’t want to see you go through the same thing.”

* * *

“So,” Vinh almost whispered as they drove to the hospital. “What’s werewolf rehab like, exactly?"

Geoffrey shrugged. “It’s...a bit like going to boarding school, I suppose. It’s all-male—there’s a girl’s center nearby, so sometimes we take field trips and do activities together. Um, we have schoolwork to keep you boys caught up with your education. During your free hours you have lots of options—there’s a game room, library, lots of space outside for sports. You’re allowed visitors and you can even get checked out if you want.” 

“Like—to leave?”

“Sure. You just have to be back by dark. And I warn you, don’t be late—official policy is that we call the police five minutes after sunset, and then you lose the privilege for as long as the staff deems fit. But on the weekends especially plenty of kids go out with their parents, even go home if they live in town.”

_Parents._ His stomach twisted. “And how does the whole...transforming thing work?”

“There’s a wooded area, a couple acres, walled off from the rest of the grounds. People normally transform around midnight—that’s the midpoint of the night, not necessarily twelve o’clock. Most kids try to sleep a few hours beforehand, then we wake you up a bit before so you can go into the forest and...you know. Stay until dawn.”

“Are there animals there?”

“Mm-hmm. Mostly rabbits. They’re cheap.”

“I ate a deer last night,” Vinh blurted. “I don’t—think I want to eat any rabbits either.”

Geoffrey sounded apologetic. “No...but you will tonight. Facilities have tried just putting meat out, but we seem to do better when we can chase something, blow off some steam. You might stop when you get more control of yourself, but...well. I have pretty good control, and I ate two squirrels last night.”

“Gross.” Vinh plucked at Hector’s oversized shirt and asked, “How do you deal with the clothes thing?”

Geoffrey gave another awkward shrug. “The locker rooms open out into the forest.”

“...There are locker rooms?”

“Yes.”

Vinh stared for a moment. He snorted, then chuckled, then bent over until his head was almost between his knees and started to cackle. 

Geoffrey blinked. 

“I’m sorry. If I knew _that’s_ what it took to cheer you up…”

“It’s—I just—” Vinh sat up but couldn’t stop laughing—he pushed the hair out of his face, smiling for the first time since this whole nightmare began. “So let me see if I’ve got this: it’s the middle of the night...and we’re in a normal locker room, just like the ones at school?”

“Yes.”

“And I take off my clothes... _fold them nice and neat_ in my _locker_ —and then—walk out into the woods, buck naked—with how many other guys, who are _also_ buck naked?”

“Pretty much,” Geoffrey said, chuckling himself now. “I’m glad you have a good sense of humor about it.”

“It’s gonna be so _embarrassing!_ ” Vinh giggled. “I don’t even take showers at school, and now I have to— _pfft—_ stand around in the woods and, what, figure out how to have naked pre-turning-into-a-monster small talk with people?”

Geoffrey shook his head, smiling. “You really are sleep-deprived, aren’t you?”

Vinh nodded, still snickering. Part of him knew that this wasn’t actually very funny, but picturing a nice, neat row of lockers and shower stalls and comparing it to his mad denudation the previous night was just too ridiculous. 

He calmed down eventually, and Geoffrey told him more about the facility. He _really_ sobered up when they started talking about learning to actually control his transformations.

“What if I don’t, though? I mean...I was completely out of control last night. With Mrs. Robinson...and I attacked Hector. He never learned to control it, right?”

“No...but he never really tried, is the thing.” 

“How long does it to take? To control when you change?”

“It depends. There’s no set timetable. It’s one step at a time. After a while you’ll be able to suppress it every other night. You don’t graduate until you can do it for three nights in a row. That takes a few months, at least.” 

Vinh didn’t like the sound of that. And he _really_ didn’t like it when he saw the hospital looming into view. He sank into his seat.

They parked, then sat in silence.

“...What if she doesn’t forgive me?”

“She asked to see you.”

“I know, but…”

Vinh looked down at his lap. Geoffrey sighed.

“You know...when I escaped, I was scared too. Of seeing my family. I thought maybe they wouldn’t want me back now that I was a dangerous werewolf, now that I’d...done things that I hated myself for doing. But can you guess how they actually reacted when they learned that I’d been found?”

“No offense, sir, but _my_ parents didn’t even like me _before_ I was a werewolf.” He put his chin in his hand, gazing at the concrete wall of the parking garage. “And the Robinsons—they’re nice, but I was only supposed to live with them for a few more weeks anyway. I’m not they’re son. They don’t _have_ to forgive me.”

"Is it so hard to believe that they _want_ to forgive you?”

_Yes,_ Vinh thought. It really, really was.

* * *

One thing that Vinh decided, as he walked across the hospital lobby and into the elevator, was that he was _not_ going to cry in front of the Robinsons.

His mom used to cry a lot, right after she screamed at him or hit him. At the time it had made him feel miserable, but as he got older he began to see it for the cheap guilt-tripping that it was. He wasn’t going to do that to Mr. and Mrs. Robinson. _He_ was the bad guy here. What could be shittier than trying to kill someone and then pass yourself off as the victim? 

The problem was that he really did feel like crying.

Geoffrey knocked on the hospital room door. 

Mr. Robinson answered. The two shook hands and introduced themselves, speaking in low tones. Vinh held back a few paces from the door, staring down at his bare feet and holding up his oversized jeans. He had been disappointed when they walked through the halls and nobody kicked him out for his attire.

Geoffrey stepped back as Mr. Robinson came out of the room. His expression was hard to read.

“Vinh.”

He opened his mouth, found that he couldn’t speak, then closed it and tried again. 

“I’m _so_ sorry.”

“Oh, Vinh—”

He stepped forward and hugged him. Vinh felt his throat close up. 

He was not going to cry.

Mr. Robinson withdrew, looking him up and down. “Are you alright? What happened?”

“I...I’m a werewolf.”

“I know that. But are you hurt? Oh, look at this big bruise…”

He rubbed Vinh’s cheek, but he drew back, feeling his face burn. “H—How is she?”

“Fine, Abigail’s fine. You—she broke her hand.”

“I bit her. Th-There was blood.”

“Yeah, there’s—she needed some stitches. But Vinh—don’t say that. You didn’t do this.”

“Yes I did.”

“You weren’t yourself. We know that.”

Vinh closed his eyes and shook his head. He didn’t understand. Vinh remembered biting her. He remembered _wanting_ to bite her. He had licked her blood from his lips.

His stomach churned. He worried that he might throw up his milkshake.

Mr. Robinson took him by the shoulder. “Come on. She wants to see you.”

Vinh cringed, but allowed himself to be led into the hospital room. Geoffrey stayed outside, flashing him a smile that was probably supposed to look more encouraging than it did. 

Mrs. Robinson was in bed. She looked a bit pale, but she smiled as he came into the room. He didn’t know which was worse—looking at her face or the bandages wrapped around her hand.

“Vinh. Honey.”

“Mrs. Robinson. I—”

“Are you alright? We were so worried.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“About this?” she said, following his gaze and holding up her hand. “Oh, sweetie, don’t worry about it. It’s alright.”

He shook his head. It _wasn’t_ alright. Why didn’t they understand that?

“I couldn’t control it. For a second I—"

“Vinh, please. You don’t have to explain anything. Sit down.”

He sat down in the chair by her bed. There was a blanket draped over it. Vinh imagined Mr. Robinson sleeping by his wife’s bedside overnight. He wondered where the Robinsons’ real children were, and if they, at least, had the good sense to hate him. 

“I won’t pretend that you didn’t give me a scare last night,” Mrs. Robinson said with a nervous laugh. Then, “Where did you get that bruise?”

“ _Don’t worry about my bruise!_ ” Vinh screamed. His eyes were burning. “I tried to rip your arm off last night!”

“Don’t say it that way.”

“ _It’s what happened!”_

"Vinh. Look at me.”

Vinh had been trying very hard _not_ to look at her, but he slowly raised his head, feeling his heart hammer in his chest.

“You are the 58th child that we’ve had the privilege of fostering. Now, you might be the first one to be a werewolf, but do you _honestly_ think that you’re the first to physically attack me?" She was actually smiling now. “You know Dakota, the girl we have a picture of on the mantle? She smacked me in the face the first time I tried to hug her! She’d been through a lot in her life, but—well, she was still herself, at least. I know that you weren’t when _this_ happened.” She held up her hand again. 

“I tried to kill you.” 

Vinh’s voice cracked as he spoke. He wasn’t going to cry. He wasn’t. He—

Vinh covered his eyes. He tried and failed to hold back a sob. 

Then Mrs. Robinson reached her good hand over and took Vinh’s in hers. “You poor dear,” she murmured. “I think _you’ve_ had a harder time with this than I have.”

Why were they doing this? He didn’t deserve it.

He completely broke down.

* * *

Several hours later, Vinh was finally checked into the rehab facility.

It was strange how time worked. His head was still spinning from how quickly his life had shifted—one day earlier he could still believe that he was a normal kid, and now he was a registered and incarcerated werewolf. On the other hand, it was barely afternoon on a day that seemed to have lasted a month.

He was now dressed in some of his own clothes, carrying a duffle bag of his things; he had stuffed Hector’s carving inside on Geoffrey’s insistence. First had come a quick orientation in the director’s office, and now Geoffrey was leading him to his dorm. He was hoping for a chance to settle in and take a nap before the nerve-wracking experience of meeting his fellow residents. After all, everyone else should have already been sleeping off the previous night’s transformation. 

So of course there were a half-dozen kids gathered in the lobby of the dorm building, all of whom looked up as the two of them walked in. 

Vinh cringed.

“Mr. B!”

A boy at the center of the group came forward. He was short and looked younger than the others; he was also wearing a sweater and jeans while his friends mostly looked like they had just climbed out of bed. He was carrying a duffel bag over one shoulder, like Vinh, as well as a cluttered box under his other arm. He had bags under his eyes but a huge smile on his face.

“Robbie!” Geoffrey said, clasping him on the shoulder. “I’d almost forgotten that you were graduating today. All set to go?”

“Yeah. My parents’ll be here any minute and then I’m gone!—for three days until I change again. This my replacement?” he added, jerking a thumb at Vinh.

Geoffrey smiled wanly. “Well, he’s our new resident. Everyone, say hello to Vinh.”

Vinh felt himself flush as he awkwardly raised one hand to the smattering of greetings. “Full moon always brings new meat,” one boy laughed. 

The boy named Robbie awkwardly adjusted his stuff so that he could shake Vinh’s hand. “Good luck, man. Hope you get out of here soon.”

“Thanks.”

“‘Course, won’t be as soon as me. First person _ever_ to graduate from this place before his fourteenth birthday, fastest to _ever_ repress a night’s transformation—”

“Fastest my ass!” one kid called. “Most of us haven’t been werewolves since we were _two!_ ”

Robbie yelled something back in response, but Vinh didn’t hear what—he blinked, his weary brain taking a moment to put the pieces together. He had just heard about someone who became a werewolf that young, except—

Vinh glanced at Robbie again. He was short, but also stocky, with swarthy skin and dark brown hair. The resemblance to Hector was uncanny once you looked for it. 

And then Robbie shifted the box under his arm again, and Vinh noticed the wooden plaque sticking out of the top. It was much nicer than the one in Vinh’s bag—it looked like it had been lacquered, and the rougarou was a much more elaborate relief carving. There were also words carved at the top, but Vinh didn’t have time to read them before Robbie turned again.

Geoffrey caught him looking and cleared his throat. Vinh caught his eye and received a slight nod. 

“Robbie, we need to quick talk before you leave.”

“Like, in your office? ‘Cause I was about to head to the main building.”

“Then I’ll walk you there. Noel, please show Vinh to your dorm, he’s going to be your new roommate.”

“Crap, just when I thought I’d have the place to myself…”

Robbie’s farewell committee broke up, and the boy named Noel motioned to Vinh as the group headed back to their rooms. But Vinh turned and watched as Geoffrey and Robbie headed out the door, the former talking in a low voice. He remembered the similarly whispered conversation that he and Hector had had a few hours ago and had a good idea what the two of them had been discussing.


End file.
